


Moving and twitching

by tinsnip



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Animal harm (discussed), Cigarettes, Conversation, Dialogue, Gen, Rationalizing, Sometimes it's hard to like humanity.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-17
Updated: 2019-06-17
Packaged: 2020-05-13 07:41:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19246801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tinsnip/pseuds/tinsnip
Summary: “I just think everything should get a say, that’s all. In how it gets used. Or what it gets used for.”A sigh. “There is a plan, Crowley...”“So you say. But I wouldn’t mind having a look at it. And I imagine the ducks feel the same way.”Crowley and Aziraphale sit together, smoking, talking about Humanity.





	Moving and twitching

**Author's Note:**

> This fic owes its existence to the Crash Test Dummies song "How Does a Duck Know".

_when everything seems planned out, when everything seems nicely planned out_  
_well, the human race will come smack your face_

* * *

“How does a duck know what direction south is?”

They were sitting together in the cool of the new evening, darkness descending on the city. The smoke from their cigarettes wafted out into the air, drifting over the street. To Crowley, looking up, the streetlamps were hazy through grey smoke.

He felt Aziraphale shift beside him. “I don’t know.”

“And how does it tell its wife from all the other ducks?”

Silence from Aziraphale; the sound of a pull on a cigarette.

“They’re smart, you know.”

“I’ve never really had an opportunity to—”

“We feed them bread at the park, and they’re smart. They recognize us. You know, sometimes we’re not back at the park for years. Decades. And yet the ducks know it’s us, don’t they.”

No response.

“Do you think they tell their kids about us?”

“I can’t see how.”

“Neither can I. But they know, somehow.”

Another inhalation, slow and deep, and the smoke curled into him and inside him, inside whatever he was made of, whatever flowed inside him. He didn’t know what was inside him. He’d never had to look.

“When was the last time you ate duck?”

Aziraphale’s shoes scuffed softly against the concrete. “I’m not quite sure.”

“It’s been a while for me. I’m not eating much these days.”

“The urge comes and goes, I suppose.”

The tip of Aziraphale’s cigarette flared red against the dusk.

“They’re smart, and the humans eat them.”

“The ducks?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, humans eat all kinds of things,” said Aziraphale, as if that made any difference.

A pause. Crowley pursed his lips. “And you’re all right with that?”

Beside him, Aziraphale sighed. “They have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air—”

“—and over the cattle, yes, yes, and even the creeping things, which, by the way, I’ve never cared much for.”

“I can’t see a human telling you what to do. You’re not properly a creeping thing anyway.”

“Only sometimes.”

“Mmmm. At any rate, they can eat what they like.”

Crowley hunched his shoulders, staring at the ground. “Have you ever been to a slaughterhouse?”

“Oh, is _that_ what this is about.”

“This isn’t about anything.”

“You’re in a very strange mood.”

“Look, just answer me.”

The soft sound of fabric as Aziraphale uncrossed and recrossed his legs. “That isn’t the kind of place I spend much time if I can help it.”

“But you’ve been.”

“Of course I’ve been. Anywhere there are humans, I’ve been.”

Crowley was only half-listening. He was remembering. Today he’d been to a slaughterhouse. It had been a long time before that. It shouldn’t be bothering him. He’d seen much, much worse. But that was humans doing it to each other, well aware, knives in hand. Humans, he felt, sort of signed themselves up for all the awful things they could do to each other by virtue of having immortal, redeemable souls, and by being able to choose to do the awful things. Or not.

But a chicken, or a duck...

“They don’t get a say, is all.”

“I’m sorry?” Aziraphale sounded politely lost.

“The ducks. The birds.”

“Ah.”

“And they never did get a proper say.”

“They get taken care of,” said Aziraphale, reasonably.

“Yeah, and then they get ‘taken care of’.”

Silence; inhalation; the slow exhale. “I can’t say I like it any more than you do.”

“D’you know, if you cut off a chicken’s head, the body keeps on—”

“Crowley.”

He stopped, dragged on his cigarette. The ash brightened.

The space between him and Aziraphale seemed to be filled with possible words. He could feel Aziraphale picking through them, choosing the next thing to say.

He didn’t let him.

“And they do other things too. To the animals.”

Aziraphale didn’t sigh. He didn’t say anything.

“And before you start, it’s nothing to do with me or my lot. I mean, a little cruelty to animals, all right, that’s a sin. But the things they do... it’s beyond cruelty. It’s science, isn’t it. It’s to _study_ them.”

Now there was a sigh. “They have to learn, Crowley...”

“What, by testing to destruction? By pulling all the legs off a spider to see if it can still walk?”

He could tell Aziraphale was pursing his lips. He didn’t have to look. “They have dominion—”

“And that makes it okay?”

“Of course it doesn’t. But intent is important. They mean well.”

“Is that what your lot say? The end justifies the means?”

Silence, then: “No. Not always. But Heaven believes in good intentions.”

Crowley let himself laugh at that. “D’you know, we just repaved the parking garage for Pandemonium, and you’ll _never_ guess what the paving material was.”

Next to him, a red star in the darkness, and a twin stream of smoke from Aziraphale’s nostrils.

“I just think everything should get a say, that’s all. In how it gets used. Or what it gets used for.”

A sigh. “There is a plan, Crowley...”

“So you say. But I wouldn’t mind having a look at it. And I imagine the ducks feel the same way.”

Nothing from Aziraphale, and Crowley stopped talking. It wasn’t helping. He drew in a deep breath, filling himself with smoke, imagining it flowing down through him to the tips of his toes into all the places where real, live things had bones and blood and meat and he just had... firmament, honestly: soot-stained firmament. In his fingers, the cigarette devoured itself down to the filter. He tossed the butt to the ground, ground his heel against it; sparks flew.

“Do you know,” said Aziraphale, delicately, “that cigarettes have been made more addictive over the last fifty years?”

He stared at the smudge on the ground. “Yeah?”

“Indeed. My understanding, which is no doubt limited, is that the tobacco crops have been specifically selected to breed for higher and higher nicotine content. Cigarettes have also been re-designed to provide fourteen-point-five percent more nicotine.”

“Fourteen-point-five.”

“So they say.”

“They do love their decimal places.”

“Mmm.”

“Pull off the spider’s legs one at a time... but not entirely, no; just by point-five percent...”

“And so,” said Aziraphale, speaking over him, “even though the actual number of smokers has decreased, the number of deaths from smoking has remained the same. Perhaps even increased. It has, you see, become much more difficult to quit. And so once one starts...”

Aziraphale’s cigarette tip described a lazy circle in the air.

“What’s your point?”

The sound of Aziraphale’s lips opening, closing, opening again: “That they didn’t get a say.”

“Who didn’t?”

“The people smoking the cigarettes.”

“They did. They started smoking.”

“Not, I think, with all the facts in hand.”

“No one ever has all the facts in hand, Aziraphale.”

“No. But sometimes the facts become clear rather too late to make much of a difference, I feel.”

“Smoking does bad things to humans. If they don’t know that by now, I’m not sure what will—”

“But they think they can get out of it, Crowley.” Aziraphale’s voice was tight. “They always think there’s a way out. Humans always do. They never think the bad thing will actually happen to _them.”_

Silence, and the sound of cars in the night, headlamps glowing brighter and fading, outlining them in morse-code flashes: Aziraphale’s cheek, hair, teeth, then darkness again.

He felt Aziraphale shift next to him, moving carefully. “So... I suppose I’m saying that they do it to themselves, too.”

He lifted an eyebrow, didn’t say anything.

“They take away their own choices. On purpose.”

Crowley rubbed a hand over his face.

“Does that make it better?”

Beside him, Aziraphale breathed in, out.

_God—_

_No._

“We should shut up Dis. Close up Pandemonium. No point. Why even bother?”

Aziraphale patted his shoulder awkwardly. “We’ve got to give them the chance, Crowley.”

His fingertips smelled of smoke, of blood. Was there blood in the air? Was it just an echo from earlier on? The sweet red scent drifted through the night, mixing with the smoke from Aziraphale’s cigarette.

He took the cigarette from Aziraphale’s unresisting fingers, crushed it out on the ground.


End file.
